she had only meant to wait it out, wait unnoticed until he had passed, taking baby steps, wanting to disappear, but then she actually did disappear, dropping into the water that was everywhere-no sides no top no bottom-and taken so by surprise that it didn't matter that she was close to shore or that she was a good swimmer because she panicked and in her panic she swallowed water and scratched her cheek and somehow clawed her hair loose from its ponytail and her hair spread out from her head like a multitude of tentacles thin as filaments like a sea creature jerking about wilding and then for a second she felt numb and blue and liquid herself and resigned to the fact that the water would overcome her and in that second she began sliding away from the present and stopped thrashing about and relaxed and felt like a bird caught in a draft of air rather than a girl pushed and pulled by the ocean and gave up.
